Databases, such as IBM's IMS (Information Management System), are well known in the art. (IMS is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.) IMS is a hierarchical database management system with widespread usage in many large enterprises where high transaction volume, reliability, availability and scalability are of the utmost importance. IMS provides software and interfaces for running the businesses of many of the world's largest corporations.
A large database management system (DBMS), such as IMS, is highly scalable and in some enterprise environments may accommodate thousands, or even tens of thousands, of users connected to the system at any given point in time. To manage the transactions initiated by these users, IMS includes a centralized transaction management system (TMS). With the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web (Web), it is desirable to make the data contained in a centralized TMS more accessible through remote application programs (clients) that communicate with software running at the host system (server) to access the desired information. Usually, the software running on the host system will execute, or have executed, a transaction that has results data associated therewith upon completion of the transaction.
IMS is usually run on a mainframe operating system such as IBM's z/OS. IMS will typically run IMS-related z/OS batch jobs. However, there is a need to run a wide variety of batch jobs which may include, for example, batch IMS-related tools and utilities, other non-IMS DBMS-related tools and utilities, non-DBMS-related tools and utilities, vendor product tools and utilities, system status monitoring and reporting and application programs.
The initiation of z/OS batch jobs is often via production scheduling or automated processes, but z/OS batch jobs can also be initiated by users. Such jobs are typically submitted from a Time Sharing Option (TSO) session userid on a z/OS machine, or transmitted to a z/OS machine from a Virtual Machine (VM) userid. However, with the increased usage of web-based processing, many users may not access, or even possess z/OS or VM machine userids. Even without mainframe access, such users may wish to invoke batch processes, and have the results of such processes returned for access by a web-based userid.
IMS product features, such as IMS Connect, are capable of routing IMS transactions from a web-based userid to IMS running on a z/OS machine. Typically, such a transaction is queued as an input message to the IMS message queue, and is read from the queue by an application program known as an IMS Message Processing Program. This program runs in an address space known as a Message Processing Region (MPR). The MPP performs the processing it was coded to perform, and may ultimately return a specific display, or IMS output message, to the invoking web-based userid through IMS TMS and IMS Connect, or to an invoking IMS terminal. However, web-based users are not able to invoke non-IMS functions, such as initiate non-IMS batch jobs without a z/OS machine userid.
Accordingly, there is a need for increased access and flexibility for web-based users of database systems, such as IMS. There is also a need for web-based users without mainframe userid access to initiate batch jobs on database systems, such as IMS.